From the Ashes
by DealingDearie
Summary: The Avengers deal with the aftermath of Ultron's battle in their separate ways. Spoilers for Age of Ultron.


Tony is relieved that Pepper keeps him up all night, discussing the company's bright future as she sits cross-legged atop the bed covers, throwing in questions about the team's newest members and where J.A.R.V.I.S. is and what their own future together might just look like, because he knows that he won't get a good night's rest for a long time yet. It's Manhattan all over again, except that this burden is his only, and Bruce can't convince him otherwise.

...

Clint tries to slip easily into the comfort of Laura's arms, his cuts and bruises still fresh and aching as they make contact with the mattress, but he can't speak softly to the baby boy sleeping against him, can't say his name, without getting choked up just a little. He settles for stroking the soft, warm head of his newborn, curled within his arms and counting on his protection, protection that he might not have been able to give if not for his son's namesake.

He can't say it, but, _oh,_ how he thinks it: gratefully, sadly, guiltily.

 _Pietro._

 _..._

Thor returns to Midgard and pretends to forget what Wanda showed him, pretends to let Heimdall's blind eyes slip into the oblivion of ignorance, and yet there is the sinking, ominous feeling that he gets late at night, when he's hung up the phone from a conversation of unfortunate brevity with Jane, telling him that all is not well, that there is something Odin didn't tell him as he sat upon that throne, that there is something brewing within Asgard, within the world, that may just be the catalyst for something unthinkable.

...

Sam and Rhodey find that the one thing they enjoy more than being the source of either Tony's ire or Steve's ire is being the source of Tony _and_ Steve's ire, so they devise a plan. Iron Patriot zooms by Steve as he's running down the sidewalks of New York, screaming at the top of his lungs: "ON YOUR LEFT."

Sam laughs so hard from his perch atop the nearest skyscraper that he nearly falls off the edge. During the night, Sam switches the labels on all of Tony's alcohol and the next morning Rhodey calmly offers Tony a drink and spits his own out when Tony makes a face at the taste of his father's old whiskey (a gift from The Howling Commandos that he kept for old time's sake).

Tony, impressed, then lets them in on the longest running joke known to Avengers Tower.

That very same day, Steve swears in frustration and Sam and Rhodey simultaneously offer him two bars of soap that they'd been keeping in their pockets.

...

Natasha goes on as if she doesn't miss Bruce because, honestly, maybe she was a bit caught up in it all. Maybe she rushed headlong, maybe she didn't stop to appreciate the friendship they had, maybe she didn't even stop to think at all.

She couldn't settle down like Clint, for that biological reason, always reminding her in dark, falsely sweet murmurs in the back of her head, and for the reason as simple as her career. She couldn't create false identities for a family, couldn't convince herself that they wouldn't end up being collateral damage, and yet being part of the team felt a lot like a crucial part of her heart.

Someday, though, she'd have to give up one or the other: the life of espionage and danger and drinking and game nights and fighting for, finally, the right reason or the hope for a life of homeliness and comfort and family and falling asleep in arms that wished, lovingly and adoringly, never to release her.

...

Wanda felt that void, deeply-an empty pit that threatened to collapse her very being, her very soul. It threatened her dynamic with the team, when she turned to give Pietro a commentary look and came up short, standing with her head tilted, staring at the empty space beside her while her team members averted their gazes, uncomfortable. It threatened her daily life, when she poured out two bowls of cereal, remembering to add far more sugary flakes than milk in Pietro's bowl, only to recall as she started carrying it away that he had no room to carry it to.

It threatened her sanity, him appearing in her dreams and nightmares alike, beckoning her to save his life or teasing her as a child or laughing when she first started developing her abilities and accidentally hit him in the head with a flyaway spoon; they were memories that haunted her nights, and when she'd cry out in fear or remorse or raw grief, there would suddenly be a cool hand laid atop her fingers, a small touch to stir her from the throes of anguish.

She would then start up in bed and stare wildly into eyes that were just barely lit in the darkness, faintly blue, mechanical irises staring almost curiously down at her, almost in concern.

...

Vision felt new and uncomfortable and foreign around the team, felt Tony's sad, nostalgic gaze from across the room when he thought Vision didn't notice, knew that they were all wondering what he was; he himself was wondering that. Thor's interaction, his easy acceptance and friendly banter, made it a bit easier, but he couldn't help the yearning that developed as he lived with the team, couldn't suppress the desire to be like them, to think like them, to merely know how their lives worked and how they perceived the world around them.

He couldn't find contentment with what he was, only with what it meant to be human.

Thankfully, there was someone in the tower who could show him that.

Wanda was a strange woman, a human that often had to wipe tears from her eyes because she'd packed two lunches for one of their missions, a person that usually only ever said anything when spoken to. She seemed very melancholy, very reserved, and he felt, somehow, that she knew what it was like to belong elsewhere, or to at least not belong with the team. So, he took what he had learned through observation, what he had learned from Thor's remorse that gripped him on those stormy nights, what he had learned from Tony's shaky hands, needing stability, that he carded through tousled strands, and what he had learned from Rhodey and Sam's easy comradery: he befriended her in order to ease her burden.

It was no easy task, and Vision wasn't even sure he knew how to acquire a true friendship, but he certainly tried.

At first, Wanda was as uncomfortable as he was, but soon she began to allow him insight into her emotions and he in turn gave her full entrance into his mind; she'd always been overly curious about his thoughts.

Shortly after, Tony tripped down the stairs and Vision made a serious comment about his untied shoelaces; Wanda, seated beside him, laughed so fiercely that she was clutching her side by the end of it, and Tony's glare of indignation as he rose back above the stair railing didn't go unnoticed. Vision began to wake her from fits of night terrors, and in only a few months' time, he began to stay for most of the night after, sitting across from her and conversing about the larger questions the world and all its vastness posed.

He enjoyed the philosophy.

But then, it was a matter of enjoying the company, and even further still, it became a matter of enjoying the way her eyes lit up with excitement when he asked about a funny story from her childhood, the way her voice lilted with that accent he couldn't exactly place (he hadn't met anyone with such an accent), and the way her hair fell just at the right angle to bask, amber, beneath the early morning light.

It was a strange feeling, and Vision had learned from Steve's sadness, then, that such things weren't eternal. Wanda's happiness could be fleeting, his own gentle attentiveness could fade, and Wanda herself would die as he never might.

But then again, something wasn't beautiful because it lasted.

 **I know I switched tenses when I started Wanda and Vision's sections but I'm way too lazy to fix all of that, ngl.**


End file.
